This debate is for socialpinko's tournament. That means that if you accept this debate, you agree to debate your next opponent in the tournament if you win.

Resolved: Public nudity should be legalized in the US.

The word “should” shall imply a moral imperative. It contends moral law requires that public nudity be legal. Public nudity means nudity in public view, not just nudity on ‘public’ property.

Basic Rules:

All sources must be adequately explained, source-bombing is not permitted. All general arguments must be clearly labeled to keep the debate focused. No new arguments are allowed in Round 4, and arguments that are dropped counted as concessions. You may freely add or drop any argument before Round 4 but you cannot resurrect dropped arguments. All other rules of courtesy (no needless semantics, don’t be a jerk, etc.) apply.

Introduction:

I will make my case in this debate by arguing for libertarian property rights and that the conclusion from my property rights argument is that no law restricting public nudity is permissible. In brief, being naked does not violate the Nonaggression Principle (NAP hereon) and thus is not wrong prima facie. Nudity, as any behavior, can only be prohibited by the owner of the property on which the behavior takes place. For the government to foist its rules on other people’s property would violate their property rights and the NAP.

C1: Discourse Ethics and the NAP

Argumentative discourse presupposes that the consent of the parties involved is relevant; we would not try to convince someone of something if we intended to force it on him. Likewise, it would not even be possible to convince someone to do something involuntary; if he has been convinced that he should do it than it is a voluntary behavior. Argumentative discourse thus cannot ever be used to justify initiatory force; force and reason are inherently separate. If we favor reason over force as a means of ascertaining what proper behavior is, the NAP must hold. It is necessary that we favor reasonable discourse over force if we prefer that we be correct because there is an objective link between reasonable discourse and arriving at correct conclusions whereas for the use of force no such relation exists. The reason why this is true ought to go without saying. The is-ought problem is avoided because the question “Do we prefer to be correct in our actions?” is asked and the argument proceeds if the answer is “Yes.” There is clearly no if-ought problem, and the answer must be yes if we are engaging in rational discourse because the purpose of rational discourse is to determine the correct solution to a problem. Defending property rights against assault does not constitute a violation of the NAP because the attacker has already eschewed the rationality of discourse ethics.

C2: Self-Ownership and Property Rights

Property rights are a necessary means of allocating control of scarce resources. My sitting in a chair precludes you from sitting in that same chair in the same way. The must natural and logical way to determine who may sit in the chair is through property rights: the owner of the chair decides. Any other method will result in a series of unsolvable problems. Property rights also exist as a natural extension of the right to self-ownership as it logically follows from the NAP. Because we do not exist in a vacuum, we cannot have any freedom to exercise our authority over our bodies if our right to also own some material objects is not granted. The owner of something exerts total authority over its use and any interference with owner use constitutes a violation of the NAP.

An unowned object enters someone’s ownership through the homestead principle, which states that an object belongs to the first person to use it or materially alter it in a substantive way. We can do this to resources by extracting them from the Earth and to land by residing or working on it or by using it for some productive purpose. After that, ownership can be transferred from person to person by voluntary exchange. Stealing or initiating force against someone to restrict his use of his property violates the NAP.

Our bodies are owned by the same principles as any other object. We are naturally and unavoidably the users and occupies of our own bodies and exert property rights over them.

This argument and C1 draw heavily from A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

C3: Nudity and Morality

Simply being naked does not violate the NAP, so it is not prima facie morally wrong. The fact that some people don’t like it is inconsequential. The only way nudity can be prohibited is if the owner of a piece of property forbids it on that property. That isn’t a law any more than a dress code for a formal event is a law. Imposing a law requiring people to be clothed on property where it is otherwise permitted by the owner violates the rights of the owners of the property by forbidding them to use their property in a specified way. Remember, property rights means total authority over the property in question, anything less is socialized collective ownership of the facet of the property that is being hijacked against the owner’s wishes and in violation of the NAP.

C4: The Government and Property

We could debate over whether the government legitimately owns any property, but even if it does the government already has the right to regulate behavior on its own land and that does not constitute a law. If it does not own property than any discussion of public land is pointless: the government cannot foist its rules on other people’s land without violating their property rights; it gets no special pass. I don’t think the government can own property but whether or not it can doesn’t affect my argument. In a private law society, absolutely no law forbidding public nudity could be permitted to exist. As long as the tyranny of the state exists, it is certainly not justified in aggressing against people in this fashion.

Conclusion:

If you want to sit around naked in your front yard, on someone else’s private property, or in a private park, and the owner of the property does not object, no one can force a law on you or the owner forbidding it. Indeed, even the owner cannot force you to put clothes on; he can only force you to leave his property. Public nudity laws are inherently unjustifiable.

I have used few sources because my argument is mostly theoretical and there is nothing I could have cited that would have made these points more convincing. My argument proceeds from logic alone.

Opening: Nudity is more open to the world, any child with a computer access could go on adult websites. How ever you must be 18 to go in. Rape and other sexual harassment and actions will increase through the years, legalising nudity is like legalising crack or cocaine it might be good for a while with out crime but more and more people will start to abuse it. They have nudist colonies they should stay at nudist colonies. I'm sure debaters on here have children and I'm sure they wont want their kids seeing a full grown man naked or full grown woman naked. Children will also become part of this culture as it increases in every day life child molestation and abuse will rise such as child rape and other sexual harassment actions in children.

Sexual harassment in woman: 38.8% woman get sexually harassed and that is just at work alone, if the law decided to add nudity into the the mix we should expect to see the numbers rise to 58% since nudity will become so new and interesting seeing sex walking around is something guys will want to to take advantage of.

Sexual harassment in children and teens: Most reports are from girls at school getting sexually harassed the numbers and actions include:

being touched, grabbed, or pinched in a sexual nature (83% females/65% males)

purposely being brushed up against in a sexual manner (75% females/55% males).

being flashed or mooned (58% males and females, equally)

having sexual rumors spread about them (50% males/54% females)

having clothes pulled at in a sexual way (46% males / 50% females)

• having their way blocked or being cornered in a sexual way (25% males / 51% females)

As you can see the numbers are higher then the male in the male to female ratio with the exception of mooning and flashing of course. If the government added nudity into the mix then we could see the numbers rise 10% more of children and teens getting sexually harassed.

Closing: If the government did decide to add legal nudity the numbers will increase and more rape and sexual harassment will happen. I would also like to thank pro for opening this argument.

Thanks to Con for accepting this debate. I will go through the various contentions brought forward by Con against my case in this round. Con's case has some major flaws: in particular she does not address many of my arguments directly and they count as dropped so far. I would encourage her to address these in the next three rounds or I will win automatically because my points will be extended cleanly through.

C1-C4:

Dropped by Con so far. She has not addressed any of my affirmative arguments. Until addressed these dropped arguments count as concessions.

Con's Opening:

Con compares legalizing nudity to legalizing cocaine, arguing that both would have negative long term consequences. I think that cocaine should also be legalized and no argument has been made for it being a negative because bare assertion, so this analogy carries no weight.

Con also asserts that there are nudist colonies and that people who wish to be naked should remain there. I am supportive of nudist colonies, and all voluntary communities centered around common values, but this is not grounds for restricting nudity in other private areas.

Con asks us whether we would want our children to see naked people. This is irrelevant to whether something should be legal. I would not want my children to see Star WarsEpisode I: The Phantom Menace, but that is not grounds to call for a ban of the film.

Con then asserts that this would lead to an increase in sexual crimes. No evidence to back this up is given during the opening, so I will address it in more detail later. However, consider taking this argument to it's logical conclusion: if people are allowed to go outside, they are more likely to meet people they don't like and get into fights. Therefore, everyone should be kept in cages to reduce fighting. Clearly we cannot restrict people's actions on the basis of what they might due unless the threat is immediate.

Sexual Harassment of Women:

Con arbitrarily asserts that sexual harassment would increase 20%. Why exactly 20%? It is impossible to forecast. In any case, Con's assertion that men would take advantage of this is not backed by any kind of evidence. A woman who didn't want to take this risk could simply continue wearing clothes as usual, as I am sure most of us would. Just because something is legal doesn't mean everyone has to do it. Additionally, a private employer could restrict nudity if it became a problem. Most workplaces already have dress codes.

Sexual Harassment in Children and Teens:

Cross-apply everything from the above argument. Schools would almost certainly implement dress codes. Public and private schools alike already have dress codes almost universally (though it should go without saying that I question the legitimacy of public schools in imposing such rules). There is no evidence to back the claim that nudity would raise those figures if it were even permitted, and those that went naked would be undergoing those risks voluntarily. A solution in both instances would be to properly punish such behavior (although I will add that several of the bullet points don't constitute legitimate offenses according to the theory I outlined in Round 1 which wasn't contested).

Conclusion:

Con's argument is based entirely on assertion and guessing about what might happen. The potential risks can be mitigated by policy changes that would obviously occur (although few policy changes would be needed because they are mostly already in place). The potential risks Con cites only apply to individuals who voluntarily undergo them.

"I like that seeing my wife naked is erotic. I don't want to lose that..."

You would not, totally different thing. Think of it just this simply; you are out and some woman in a bikini walks past you, do you have all of a sudden highly lustful thoughts? In comparison, later in the evening at home your wife turns to you and you can see the desire in her eyes and the love she has for you, and then .... are you really less aroused because of the other images or women that you may have seen who may in fact be less clothed? Or on the other hand, are you less aroused by your wife when she is naked than Muslim men whose wives wear Burkas? I doubt it.

I'm not arguing that it's politically feasible to change the law or that we should have sweeping social changes. "It would be better if we didn't wear clothing" would be a much different resolution. This argument is just based on the property rights ethics that I use to contest basically every law on the books. I tend to believe that almost all of us would still wear clothes, but it's unjustifiable to assault people who prefer not to.

Would not be poss to legalise this due to the socialization of the govt and also generational beliefs, kids would look and be gobsmacked! can't see this happening unless we are socialized around this and to do so we would need a diff form of govt which could arise other probs. So I reckon "noooo" public nudity should not be legalized unless ya want a snowball affect to pccur for the worst.

Reasons for voting decision: personally I agree with con who didn't actually make legit arguments and she also forfeited most of her rounds. She could have argued that pro was mistaken and didn't define NAP so his argument is ambigous and she made and argument of "the commons" how technically everybody owns the park so it would have to be left up to a majority vote.

Reasons for voting decision: Con never refutes the aff case and offers a pretty weak opposition to public nudity that assumes that people have no self-control. The NAP proves public nudity should be allowed.
Grammar: see "Sexual harassment in woman." Too many mistakes to count.